Live Chat: LOST, s06e14, "The Candidate"

Okay, I think I have my unified theory of why I'm not that crazy about this season of Lost (note: if you look through the archives, you'll see that I've said I've enjoyed a few episodes, but I'm talking about the season as a whole here, which I can't describe as anything but a disappointment).

In every season of Lost, there are a handful of episodes that are uninteresting but necessary - episodes that are clearly just about moving characters from point A to point B, stalling for time before whatever The Next Big Event is happens. In other words, it's as though the writers are thinking "this has to happen, but we don't want it to happen quite yet, so we'll just spend some time getting them into a position where it can happen." And hey, some of those episodes have been pretty good; supposedly "The Constant," one of the best episodes ever, was born out of just such a situation.

But this final season has been an entire season composed of those episodes. They have an ending in mind, but they don't want it to end just yet, so we get some time with factions forming (and then breaking off just as quickly), new characters showing up (and getting killed just as quickly), and a sidewaysverse that I still don't quite understand. They've made a big deal out of the arrival of Desmond, but now he's spent at least one episode in a well in what I am half-expecting to turn into some sort of homage to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles where the well is the portal between universes or something like that.

And then there's the "answers" issue. Yes, we've learned more about the Island and its long-time residents, but all in an increasingly transparent "check THAT one off the list" fashion. I almost would have prefered not to know what the whispers were than to learn about it with such sledgehammer subtlety.

Now, of course, we are fairly close to the end, though, so maybe all of those set-ups will start to pay off. Or maybe this will all be set-up for next week's reported Jacob/Smokey flashback. We'll see. Join in the chat; you can help us mock.